


scattered

by fairbanks



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Typical Horror, Jonelias Week (The Magnus Archives), M/M, Manipulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, asexuality introspection, college age jon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbanks/pseuds/fairbanks
Summary: In university Jon meets a man thrown out of the Magnus Institute and full of supernatural knowledge he offers like breadcrumbs. His name is Elias Bouchard.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70
Collections: Jonelias Week 2020





	1. pre canon

**Author's Note:**

> for jonelias week. i'm using the prompts pretty loosely but each chapter is supposed to be from one. mostly.

Jonathan dreams in color and smell.

The sidewalk is grey and smells of evening damp. The sky is bruise blue and carries an ocean hint he’s too accustomed with to notice. The pebbles under his navy sneakers are blobs of brown and black, they smell like rattling. The grass he falls back on is limp green and smells like it needs to be cut.

The pages of the book are and they smell like .

The pages of the book are _wrong_ and they smell _wrong._

The pages of the book are nosebleeds and smell like dead things that aren’t dead.

His dreams record scratch around this. His mind whirls and tries to fill in information his curiosity demands but his well being buries deep down under limp green and dirt. His mind says ‘I need to know’ and his mind says ‘we can’t know, we can’t, we can’t.’ Awake he tries to agree with his rational mind but asleep his thoughts betray him without careful guard.

The boy he can’t remember is snatched away by a thing he can only remember the arms of. His mind sometimes fills startling blanks, the resounding horror of the boy’s face and breath, the shadow in the doorway illuminated so briefly in mind numbing detail, blood on his hands though there is no blood. There wasn’t blood. Spiders don’t eat that way.

He wakes.

-

Georgie puts a cup of tea in front of him, brewed dark the way he likes it. Jon knows that means she’s worried, she usually tries to get him to try it in any other way than his ‘overly bitter tastes.’

“Long night?” she asks sympathetically. Jon grunts, takes the tea and lets it scald down his throat. This is the only class they have together, ‘linguistic archeology’ taught by a perpetually late professor and her equally unreliable grad student. Eating in the halls isn’t allowed but that stops no one.

The tea does smell bitter, earthy around the edges in a way that reminds him of the forest when it’s damp. Georgie is giving him a look that says he hasn’t answered properly or fast enough. He pieces together what he thinks she wants to hear. “Couldn’t get to sleep.”

“Nightmares?” she asks as she sits next to him. They’ve shared a bed enough after study sessions went on too long that he can’t pretend he doesn’t get those. He nods. “I wish you’d see someone for all this.”

“It’s fine, Georgie.” She hates when he dismisses these matters so he tries to soften it with a joke, “Far be it from me to decry the university’s wait time for literally anything at all but I’d probably be graduated by the time they could fit me in.”

Georgie snorts and Jon eases. “You should hear what John had to go through- blond John?”

“The dirty one?”

“He’s not- ok, well anyway, the trouble he had,” Georgie starts, heading down a twisting tale of university woe. Jon tries to listen but his mind wanders to the smell of old chalk and the heat under his fingers, the give of paper cups and how easy it would be to squeeze and let it splatter over the table. Maybe he does need sleep, or help with it.

Class spares him from having to answer and by the time they’re out Georgie’s busy listening to Jon grumpily deride their professor and trying not to laugh.

“Why don’t you come over tonight? To cuddle,” she asks.

“I don’t cuddle,” is his ornery response, and she rolls her eyes. This thing between them is tentative, feels like perhaps he could reach out and grasp her. Georgie isn’t afraid of anything, least of all his bumbling.

“Come over tomorrow for dinner then. Absolutely no cuddling,” she offers, and Jon pushes his lips into a smile he starts to feel when it settles onto his face.

\--

When he feels like picking at a wound Jon reads the leaked Magnus Institute papers. He still remembers when they came out, his grandmother’s scoff as her and a neighbor spoke about what nonsense it all was.

It is nonsense, he reminds himself. One monster, one book, fragments of memory that are bitterly unreliable. Maybe it was just his under-formed, childish mind making a story. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he’s always been wrong.

He clicks through an archive online and reads, and reads. Nonsense, sneering buffoonery, overwrought delusion. His own ridiculous tale could fit in the cracks.

One comes up about spiders and he clicks it closed, fingers trembling so minutely it surprises him when the water in his bottle shakes as he picks it up. Down it goes and he pulls out his phone, a battered old thing, scrolls down until he finds Bouchard.

**Busy?**

Elias is prompt, as always. **Not tonight.**

\--

Jon met Elias Bouchard online, of all places. During a frantic search for more about Jurgen Leitner he found a strange trail, a scent so faint he would have missed it if he weren’t so dedicated to answers. Someone who knows (knew?) Leitner, his library, perhaps his purpose. Someone who used to work for the Magnus Institute but left. Jon has always gotten the impression ‘thrown out’ or ‘usurped’ was more what happened, given Elias’ tone on the matter.

Elias ignored his messages at first. Elias ignored them the second time around as well. By the third he answered, by the fourth he gave Jonathan a place to meet. At the end of that meeting Jon had his phone number and an infuriating new source of information.

Tonight he sits on the couch of Elias’ townhouse, modest on the outside but with strange, expensive touches on the inside. He pours Jon gin because Jon hates whiskey. Sometimes he pours Jon whiskey with a smile.

“You’ve been picking again,” Elias points out, glancing to the raw skin of Jon’s knuckles. Jon resists the urge to hide them, downs his gin in too few gulps than such a brand deserves. Elias’ face is vaguely pinched, with annoyance or amusement Jon can’t tell.

“Do you ever feel yourself on a conveyor belt?” Jon asks instead of dealing with that, watches Elias swirl his cup.

“A puppet on strings?”

“No, a hallway, a- a point a to point b with no branching off.” Jon rubs his face. “I’m just tired.”

“Tired enough to be forthright with your troubles for a moment before backpedalling. I’m impressed.”

Jon glowers at him, finishes off the dredges of his gin and puts it to the side. “I’ve been dreaming about it.”

“Your Leitner?” Elias says, and it’s such a relief to hear anyone speak of it. Like Jon isn’t delusional, a secret a man he hardly knows keeps for him with a perfectly curved smile. “It’s about spiders, isn’t it?”

Jon’s refused to tell Elias about it, can’t quite give it all away yet when Elias is similarly closed mouth about why he knows as much as he does. Elias figured out he was young when he found it, and he figured out someone was lost to it. This sudden insight is so pointed and specific Jon startles. “How-?”

“It’s not uncommon for spiders and control to be a running theme. That is your problem, isn’t it? A lack of control.”

Jon sits back, the gin too thick on the back of his tongue. “Yes. No,” he answers. “I just- I need to know the destination, why this route, why point a to b.” When Jon says it Elias’ eyes seem to sharpen, distant grey storms. Old on a younger face. “This is ridiculous, it’s nothing.”

He gets up and Elias doesn’t stop him, just watches him move for his coat.

“Jon,” Elias puts his glass down, stands to help Jon into his coat. It sends a warmth over Jon’s shoulders like alcohol. “Check your room for spiders, won’t you?”

At home Jon thinks of how he could strangle Elias for that remark, old paranoias wreaking havoc in his guts, dancing on blades. And still there are too many cobwebs, just as Elias subtly suggested.


	2. manipulation

Looking into Elias Bouchard offers little information. There’s a rich family of Bouchards that own a winery in France, and there’s Elias’ college, where he apparently was notorious for being a bit of a stoner. If Jon’s being honest everything he’s seen about Elias doesn’t fit the Elias he actually knows- confident, smug, a little boringly bureaucratic despite no longer being one. He actually tuts when Jon doesn’t put his shoes in the right area when he comes to visit, it’s hard to believe the man worked in the Institute at all.

Except for the moments it’s very clear he did, the sharp eyed regard and cleverness, the way he knows just what to say to burden Jon with dozens more questions. He’s refused to be forthright about most things, tells Jon to be spoon fed the information is asking to be swallowed whole by the world.

Who else does Jon have but this infuriating man? Even still, for as many times as he’s stormed out with the specific intent of never returning curiosity always tugs him back. The challenge always ensnares him.

“Why did you tell me to look for cobwebs? What are you implying?” Jon demands into the phone. Georgie’s dragged him out to a bar, the raucous laughter and shouting barely permeating through the wall and into the alley he’s escaped to. 

She’ll realize he’s gone soon enough, maybe already has. Sometimes she goes to look for him but lately she just leaves him be, annoyance at the edge of her gaze when they meet eyes again. Disappointment.

“You sound tense, Jon,” Elias answers. “Did you find too many?”

He did. “Why can’t you ever just answer a damn question!” 

“Where are you?” Elias asks instead, and Jon bites his lip to stifle a groan. 

“Out.”

“No need for surliness, Jon.”

“Oh, I think there very much is a need for surliness,” Jon spits. 

“I’m guessing a pub, given you sound tense and outside. Am I correct?” Elias asks without missing a beat.

Jon sighs and slumps back against the alley wall, head thunking on the brick. His hand fumbles for cigarettes he must have left at home so he pulls out his lighter instead to fiddle with. On. Off. Light then dark.

“Would you like to hear a story that’s come through the Archives?” Elias’ tone takes on a quality Jon’s becoming familiar with though he can’t quite place. Sharper than his pleasantries, the defenses thinner. Whenever Elias speaks of the archives at the Institute he sounds distantly angry. Sometimes Jon swears he sounds hungry as well.

And who is Jon to speak, when the stories he’ll tell from there always hook under Jon’s skin. “More nonsense, I assume.”

It’s weak and Elias doesn’t give him the time of day. “It’s about a woman in a pub alley, asked for a light by a figure down the way.”

“On the nose, don’t you think?” The brick against Jon’s back feels colder, the alley longer, darker at the edges.

“Hush, Jon. The figure was tall but featureless in the dark, she wrote. Strangely still where they stood, and wouldn’t move forward into the light.” Elias’ tale has Jon glance down the way. So easy to picture it when Elias speaks into his ear like this, as though his fingers are fumbling with a cigarette, his head craned to try and make out a figure calling from the dark.

“Do you have a light?” it asks Jon, Elias’ voice overlaid unnaturally.

“Come into the light,” Jon- no, Elias says. Jon backs towards the door, glad to feel the frame at his back. Something is wrong, something more than predatory people in the dark, more than tasers and mace. He’s being ridiculous. “She thought she was being ridiculous,” Elias tells him.

The figure will not move, but his- her friend comes from the door beside. Elias continues. “What are you still doing out here? Her friend asked. When he saw the figure, heard the quiet plea, he plucked the lighter from her fingers.”

“Don’t-” Jon tries to say, she tried to say. He watches the man get too close, helpless as the _snapyank_ of some mighty trap springs and he’s just… gone. 

“Of course she saw him again a month later, but he didn’t seem right,” Elias finishes as Jon swallows bile.

“Nonsense,” he insists on shaky legs. Elias laughs as though he can see the tremble.

“Why don’t you go inside now, Jon?”

\--

Georgie doesn’t invite him out anymore. 

The last time he saw her they sat in her dorm, pouring over notes for class. His mind is on cobwebs, lighters and alleys. He’s surprised when she suddenly leans in close, as if to kiss him. His first thought is of traps and people coming back wrong.

His second is that she wants to kiss him, and both thoughts seem nonsense. She doesn’t, kiss him that is, just smiles a little sadly and sits back. She doesn’t invite him to stay and he doesn’t ask. 

Instead she sees him off with a hand through his hair. “Take care of yourself, Jon.”

\--

“It’s important to take care of yourself,” Elias tells him as he hands him a glass of water. Water is new, not expensive gin or equally expensive whiskey. 

“Don’t patronize me,” Jon snaps. He’s so tired and Elias is so refreshingly immune to his moods. After years and years of watching himself, trying to keep his tone lighter and his expressions less scathing, trying to be less offensive in every which way, after all that it’s freeing to not care. It’s euphoric that Elias’s face doesn’t crumple in hurt or anger.

It’s less lovely Elias usually seems blandly amused. “Far be it for me to imply you’re anything less than completely put together.”

Jon stands, storms to the large window. In it is a reflection of the grand room, darkened by the night sky- so dark all he can really see is Elias’ eyes boring into his back like it’s fertile ground. What would he plant there, Jon wonders. A knife seems likely, though that may be his lack of sleep talking.

“You haven’t slept in some time, have you?” Elias asks, and Jon swears the pity in his tone is pointed.

“Why do you even invite me over? What do you get out of all this?” he demands, turning from the unsettling grey eyes in the window glass and to their real counterparts.

“I told you before Jon, I enjoy talking to you.” Always patient. “I enjoy helping you, when you allow me.”

That makes Jon laugh, hardly a pleasant noise but a laugh besides. Elias continues on. “One day I’ll return to the Institute and I’d like you to join me. I think you would make an excellent addition.”

That’s new, has Jon plopping back into his seat. All of Elias’ furniture is sturdy, comfortable and expensive, built from old wood but with sleek, modern lines. It’s as artfully mismatched as Elias seems sometimes, a rich former stoner sat prim and proper, dull and engaging in equal measure. “And you won’t tell me why you had to leave the Institute.”

Elias picks up his whiskey, the lines by his eyes giving away the tumultuous anger Jon sometimes catches a glimpse of. “I will tell you this, Gertrude Robinson is a dangerous woman. Stay away from her, Jon.”

It’s the most Jon’s ever gotten out of Elias, and before he can push Elias stands. “I think that’s enough for one night, don’t you?”

\--

At his dorm Jon cleans the cobwebs like an angry god. His roommate says nothing, watches him warily and pretends to turn in early. When Jon lies down he brings out his laptop instead of pulling up his blanket.

Gertrude Robinson has a picture on the Institute webpage, ‘Head Archivist’ in tiny black letters under it. She’s older, or was when the picture was taken, sharp eyed like a librarian. There’s a coldness that reminds him of his grandmother, makes Elias' warning seem more legitimate even if it’s about a little old lady. Even so coldness is all he can find, no hidden clues no matter how he squints at the old picture.

He doesn’t find much else besides that picture and a brief blurb declaring Gertrude one of the longest running members of the Institute. In fact all he finds aside from that is another picture deeper in the site, buried in old copies of some newsletter the Institute staff haphazardly put together. 

It’s a picture of a holiday party, Gertrude in the background with a blond standing beside her, towering over her with an open, friendly face compared to her less than impressed or welcoming expression.

Jon saves the picture. It’s a start.

\---


	3. identity

**Dinner?**

Jon squints at the text, suspicious of the blocky font printed on his phone screen. He and Elias didn’t really do meals, what they did was Jon barging in with questions and Elias offering him alcohol, likely in an attempt to be a decent host to a menace or shut him up.

**Since when are we the dinner sort?**

Jon appreciates Elias isn’t one of those infuriatingly fast texters or equally agonizingly slow. He has plenty of time to get another few lines of translation in before his phone lights up again, silent for the sake of the library he holed up in. **Since I’m not entirely sure you eat at all.**

Jon hopes the scowl reads through his words, each letter punched in with relish. **I don’t see how that’s your concern or business.**

**I consider it a matter of scientific intrigue. Surely the world could learn from a man fueled purely by spite and outrage.**

Jon can’t help a soft snort at that response, glad Elias can’t hear or see it. **I’m not a child, I can feed myself.**

Another few moments and Elias answers, **Prove it where I can see it.**

Prat. Jon taps his pen against the edge of the old wood table, glad the reading room he chose is mostly empty. He can already picture Elias dragging him to some absurdly expensive place just to make him squirm, a night of being painfully underdressed and woefully under experienced.

The thought gives him an idea though, and he reluctantly types: **Fine, but I choose the place.**

Elias’ response is quick this time. **A deal, if I choose next time. I’ll pick you up at your dorm.**

Jon closes the phone, sitting back with a sigh. Well, at the very least he’d have more time to badger some answers out of the mysterious Elias Bouchard.

\---

Jon is a student at uni and, in turn, Jon is very poor.

Growing up his grandmother was frugal, never struggling but there was no wiggle room in their budget. Books were from the library or thrift, food was not wasted, eating out was for special events, few and far inbetween. His laptop was a going away gift he helped pay for with his summer job that year. There was no asking his grandmother for money, even if he could stomach doing so. There simply wasn’t any to give that she didn’t need herself.

Jon was prepared for as much, saved a little and applied for work at the college to help fill the gaps his meal plan and loans didn’t quite cover. He could buy a beer at the pub when Georgie used to bring him along, once upon a time, and he could indulge in a meal outside of campus dining from time to time.

In this case the tiny, gloriously affordable curry place several blocks away, the one with a grand total of two tables for dine in guests, dented cutlery and the family working there screaming and laughing at each other over the sizzle of the grills.

The faint quirk of Elias’ fine brow makes the whole evening worth it so far.

He stands at Jon’s side, coat cut perfectly over his shoulders and so out of place the man at the register whistles to see it. Jon comes by enough he has a regular order and has to brush off the cashier’s amused looks. When Elias places his order and goes to sit down the cashier grins at him. “Good catch.”

“Right,” Jon answers in bafflement, taking far too long to process the meaning behind the comment. When he does he hurries back to one of the small tables Elias has claimed for them. Why anyone would think this looked like a date was beyond him.

“It amuses you to see me in a setting like this,” Elias says as Jon sits, trying to push the cashier’s comment from his mind with stubborn intensity. 

“Are you going to claim you weren’t planning on some fancy nonsense just to see me squirm?” Jon shoots back.

Elias’ brow raises but there’s a flicker of genuine amusement in his eyes, different somehow than what Jon’s seen of him so far. “Touche. A shame for you I don’t squirm.”

“We’ll see about that. Wait for the dinner rush and see how you fare.”

In truth Elias is hardly the fish out of water Jon hoped, takes to his curry and doesn’t fuss over paper napkins or chipped plates. He even seems to enjoy the meal, which Jon would be a touch insulted if he weren’t. The place may be cheap but it was easily the best curry several blocks over, and plenty of it.

“So you do eat,” Elias tells him when he has his mouth around a spoonful. Jon glances up to see Elias watching him, grey eyes as unnerving as they ever were. Sometimes Elias seems to soften himself and sometimes he’s all sharp edges, the kind begging for Jon to brush against and get cut. 

When Jon swallows Elias taps the side of his own mouth and nods towards Jon’s, making Jon color as he realizes he has sauce at the corner of his lips. He licks it off and Elias follows the movement. Jon distantly thinks of predators.

“What was the real point to this?” Jon demands after wiping his mouth with a napkin for good measure. 

“It concerns me that you truly believe your company isn’t reason enough,” answers Elias without even the slightest hint of concern. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Are we?” Jon shoots back. “Frankly I was under the impression you have too much time on your hands and enjoy being vague at me rather than get a hobby.”

“Hm, I won’t say it doesn’t have its charm.”

“Why were you fired from the Institute?” Jon tries for the umpteenth time, though this round he has some ammunition to follow his abrupt subject change. “Was it for drug related problems?”

Jon half expected annoyance, perhaps insult, but instead Elias laughs. It’s a short sound, more a bark than anything, and it carries with it the warmth of someone pleased rather than irritated at the invasiveness. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

“Just- I googled you,” Jon mutters, stabbing at his curry as Elias hums.

“No, I know what people find with a simple search. You looked deeper into me, bravo.”

“Most people would be upset, mind you,” Jon points out.

The way Elias smiles at him makes his neck warm. “I would say we aren’t most people, wouldn’t you?”

“You didn’t answer,” Jon replies as a scramble to deal with the flip of his stomach. “Weed, then?”

“No Jon, not drugs,” is Elias’ amused reply. “Ask me again at dinner next week.”

“I never agreed to- '' Jon starts before remembering he did in fact agree, and agreed to let Elias choose the place. Unfortunate. “Why can’t we just meet at your house as always?”

“Stop by there next friday,” Elias dismisses his concerns just as the first of the dinner rush starts through the doors. It’s timed so well that part of Jon wonders if Elias somehow paid the usual mob of hungry college students to come in at the exact right moment.

The way Elias’ eyes twinkle with amusement gives Jon the unsettling feeling the man could read the thought right from the lines of his face.

\---

Jon collapses on his bed that night shakily. On the ride home they got into a discussion about the Institute leak, some of the ridiculous stories Jon’s found, all leading to Elias telling him one of the statements he’s seen in his time there.

Elias is a remarkable story teller, remembers details so vividly and never fails to engross Jon in the tale beyond the point of reason. This one is of some woman and worms, a sexual encounter gone wrong. Jon’s skin itches by the end and Elias looks at him in such a way in the dim light of the car, avid and sharp.

“Not many people are like you, are they, Jon?” he asked like this was a good thing, and once again Jon’s skin felt warm.

Jon stares at the ceiling, resisting the urge to scratch at his skin. Rather than worms his mind harkens back to the cashier. Nice catch, he said, and finally Jon forces himself to confront the fact that the dinner could have easily been construed as a date.

Jon didn’t date. Not in highschool, not so far in college. Georgie was a fleeting possibility, one they danced about until recently. Hardly surprising, Georgie was the kind of girl people would count themselves lucky to catch the attention of and Jon was… well, Jon. His best qualities were not ones that endeared people to him, at best an acquired taste and at worst an irritation.

_Not many people are like you,_ he remembers Elias saying, plays over the warmth in his tone, the strange thrill of discovery.

Jon didn’t date. Jon doesn’t date. He certainly doesn’t date random men who play keep away with information and are probably far too old for him anyway. He doesn’t date infuriatingly smug, rich bastards with too much time on their hands. He doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t remember the curl of Elias’ smile in the dim of the dingy restaurant.

It wasn’t Elias’ intention, was it? He didn’t do anything forward, their hands didn’t brush and there was no arguing over the bill. Besides, there’s little Elias could get out of it, unless he was aiming for sex, which seemed equally ludicrious. The nicest thing Jon’s ever heard about his looks was that he was ‘striking,’ the worst gave him plenty of reason to assume he wasn’t really the sort people chased after.

Which was a relief and always has been. In truth he always struggled with understanding what made someone attractive, as though there was some secret hidden in the jut of a jaw or the wave of a lock of hair. Aesthetics made sense but he supposes this is all part of being asexual, a term he found when he was a teen on forums of people baffled in the same way he was.

It wasn’t a label he used often, once to Georgie and only because it was easier than trying to explain himself otherwise. He didn’t really care to align himself with anything other than being himself- Jon, who didn’t understand attraction and largely found sex to be an annoying topic his peers refused to shut up about. Admittedly he had some curiosity about it now, a far cry from when he was younger and the very idea repulsed him. Back then it felt a pressure, another reason he was far from others. At least he could say he had a good enough grasp of himself now not to care as he used to.

He turns towards the wall, the university mattress as flat and uncomfortable as ever. Maybe he should ask Elias, just to be sure, make it clear he wasn’t some young thing to be swept into bed. The flare of disappointment he feels at the idea of Elias cutting him from his life at that news surprises Jon. 

With a frustrated sigh he closes his eyes and wills himself not to dream of spiderwebs and worms.

\---


End file.
